~ journeying towards hope

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I haven’t blogged in quite a while. It hasn’t been because I didn’t have anything to say. On the contrary it was that I have had too much to say, and have not spent the time to winnow through it. But it is something else as well. I know that more than enough has been said about the nosedive trajectory of public discourse in the last year. I have felt the pain of being angered by things that I have read and have spread some animosity myself. Like most, it has left me feeling soured on the idea of putting my thoughts out into the stratosphere. I often think about posting something, even something neutral or innocuous, and just say, “Um-nope.” I feel raw at times, afraid of finding out what people are so willing to tell me about what they really think of me.

I was talking with my niece and my cousin last night, both of whom are writers. Yes, you are, Kate. And they both expressed extreme discouragement with what has become of the literary process. It seems that like the rest of society, authors have been sucked into the world of social media and have to somehow prove they have a “fan base” or a “following” before a publisher will look at their work. Or something along those lines. They have to blog, and have a “Facebook presence” and market themselves any way they can to create interest in what they have to say.

So you don’t make a name for yourself by writing good literature, you make a name for yourself by being appealing on social media, and then a publisher will publish your book, even if it is crap. And if you have read through the bestseller list lately, you know that a large proportion of it is crap. It doesn’t take a literary genius to know that. Many books today are formulaic and boring, no more interesting than this blog probably is. There is no deft use of language, no intricate story line. What sells, and this is not the fault of the writers or publishers, is what used to be called pabulum. Look it up.

So people who are really compelling and provocative writers maybe never put pen to page, or should I say fingers to keyboard, because they feel defeated before they start. Most people don’t know how to be fascinating on Facebook. No one even really knows, except Mark Zuckerberg probably, what makes a social media site irresistible to the masses. In my estimation, it isn’t the depth of content.

So here I am, another dinosaur whining about how nobody reads or buys books anymore. It does seem really sad to me that someone like my niece, (who has such a “voice”!) could feel so discouraged before she even started. There are so many people in the world! They all have a unique story. We are brought to life by story. Story gives meaning to our existence, it lifts us above our existence, it shapes our existence. What words could ever be more magical than “Once upon a time…”? Since before we had written language, our major form of recreation was the telling of stories. And the true ones are always the best ones. They bring out the hero in us. They inspire and encourage us. They touch our deepest pain.

We need to hear from people who think and feel deeply and can tell us a story about that. We don’t need more shallow sites with people dressing up their children and taking pictures of them, pretending their lives are perfect and no one ever gets dirty or crabby or sick. That feeds a sickness in US, it doesn’t make us better, or more brave, or more kind. We don’t need another Facebook page with someone hyping themselves up, we need people who will struggle in solitude to use language to connect us to our truest and best selves. That is what the best stories do.

So let’s just write anyway. Write even if you think no one will ever read what you say. There are many of us who are dying for what you have to give us. Perhaps at some point, the pendulum will swing and we will go back to civility, disciplined thought, and a love for the printed word. It could happen. Things could slow down and get real. And we could be healed of this great sickness that we don’t call by its name. It has increased our depression, sense of isolation, envy, dissatisfaction, unrealistic expectations-and has given us so little in return. To call it “social” is ironic in the extreme. So write! And while you are at it, pick up the phone and call someone! Or meet for coffee. Or go for a walk. It may not be glamorous or perfect but it is real and true and I promise it will make you feel better.

I would be willing to guess that the person who took this picture doesn’t use the same words as me when she talks, but she speaks my language nevertheless. I am so utterly enchanted by this photograph that it pretty much takes my breath away. I personally think that the aurora borealis is one of the finest things God made up. I bet there was applause in heaven when He spoke that baby forth.

I am enthralled with nature. It has become trite to say that you experience God most when you are outside someplace beautiful instead of locked up in a church building with a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t associate with otherwise, but it really is true for so many of us. We know we need to hang out with our tribe and get to know them and help them and even harder, be helped by them, and most of all, just love them, just the way they are. And hope we may be loved just so, in return. And I am not knocking it. It is quite brilliant when it clicks. Which for me, I say with great gratitude, it usually does.

But nature ALWAYS clicks. Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar in the World, writes, “According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, ‘Grow, grow.'”

And Gerard Manley Hopkins:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

Yup. As much as we have desecrated and spoiled, violated and savaged this beautiful Earth, it still sings to us, still cradles us, still points us to the one who made it anytime we care to follow the trajectory of its finger. This morning I took the dog out for a walk and the sun was just rising and touching everything with an iridescent gold-beyond the fields and trees in the foreground were the mountains, blue tinged with light in the foreground, the farther huge peaks white and shrouded in cloud. And if that was not enough, chevrons of geese were flying over my head, calling, calling, and their underbellies were brilliant with gold light too! And no one seemed to be around but me. Even in this big city, I could feel that I was the only one who saw it, that it was God speaking to me in my native tongue.

Someone said that a lot of paths lead nowhere at all, but God will come down any path to meet us. I believe that. He came down a dingy dark road to meet me, and keeps on doing it every day as I struggle up from sleep, not sure I want to put the effort that is required into living well. He will meet me in the loving gaze of my family, my warm furry dog, the words of books, the stories left behind of Jesus’ time on earth, Handel’s Messiah, Celtic laments, and when I stop striving and wait, in His own good time. This is MY native tongue, and God does speak it so well. He speaks it even in the silence.

“Truer words were never spoken- you picked them up when you were young Maybe woven in a story that goes back to where you’re from Truer words were never spoken and for an audience of One Where you’re healed is where you’re broken God knows your native tongue.

Build a bridge with what’s behind you- the scattered pieces of your past Build it out over the chasm to the Promised Land at last Start a bridge with what’s behind you- God picks up where you’ve begun Cause where you look is where love finds you God knows your native tongue.

Jesus spoke in Aramaic- sounds I wouldn’t understand In a local ancient dialect for the people of that land Our little words can’t hold a candle to the splendor of the Son That can explain this world of wonder and shine the same on everyone But little words can’t hold a candle all your own when darkness comes They’re just the size for us to handle God knows your native tongue.”

It’s really interesting to me that when I think of resting, it isn’t the idea of resting from being Judge of the World. I think about resting from the demands of lots of relationships (I am basically an introvert) or resting from physical labor, but not from the hard work of doing God’s job-a job I was never designed to do. I spent such a large part of my life thinking that it WAS my job to evaluate everyone around me, to decide where they stood on any number of things, and then to set them straight. And I worked very hard at it. It was SUCH a hard job. It made me feel isolated, like a weirdo, like I always had to somehow hold myself apart from people. It is very difficult to describe just how bad it felt. It was like being outside a house filled with light, people, laughter, and fun, looking in the window, freezing in the cold. Like the Little Match Girl. Just slowly freezing to death, encased in my harsh opinions of others, cut off from them by not being able to just be one of them.

Somehow, part of getting older for me has been to let go of that role. I realize now that it really isn’t my job. I can evaluate my own actions and attitudes and pray that God will make me a nicer person, a better person, but it never really worked to try to impose my judgment on others. All it did was separate me from them when what God wanted was for me to love them. Because that is my job. It is pretty much my only job. It is pretty clear in the commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.

So it turns out that just loving people is really pretty fun. It isn’t always, of course, and some people are REALLY hard to love, but the ones right in front of you aren’t that hard if you take your job seriously. Well, except the ones in traffic. Obviously the Bible wasn’t written when there were cars and interstates. And it is just such a relief to not have to DECIDE about everybody. To just see them as frail and broken and needing love, just like me. To feel empathy and admiration for who they are and how hard they are fighting their own particular battles.

Life is gift, not a job. It is something to be received, noticed, accepted, reverenced, protected, and even enjoyed. It goes so fast. Why waste it hating people? Why not just accept the possibility that other people may just be as good, as nice, as well-intentioned as you think YOU are, even if they express it differently? There aren’t many people out there who aren’t trying pretty hard to do the right thing. Why not just give them the benefit of the doubt? Isn’t that what we all want? Whether we like it or not, God loves us all, the jihadists, the child abusers, the elitists, the proud, the greedy, the judgmental, the weak, the losers and the winners, and believe it or not, the Democrats AND the Republicans. And most surprising of all, he loves me. This, I think, is what should always surprise us the most, because no one knows better than oneself how awful we really can be inside.

So rest, beloved. Just rest. There is safety, always safety, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

I read an article yesterday about Diane Keaton, one of my favorite actresses. It was entitled “Diane Keaton Can’t Stop” and it was a reference to her house habit, which she calls an addiction. The magazine referred to it as “serial nesting” and described several of the dozen or so houses she has renovated, including a Lloyd Wright. The last four homes she has redone have all been featured in home magazines. Her current home, which is picture perfect and which she presumably spent a good deal of time on, is already passé, and she is designing the next one, which she is already sure will not be her last. She is quoted as saying, ” I ask myself, What the hell are you looking for?” Indeed.

What is this elusive thing we call “home”?

In a song called “Beloved Planet,” an attempt to express this longing, I wrote,

“Now I left home at seventeen
And have scarce been back again
Yet still I’m longing for a home
I know I had not then.

I’ve lived a score of places since,
Yet none has held me long-
Just streets and numbers in a book
My yearning bids me on.

Oh Beloved Planet-why do you make me homesick
When you’re the only home I’ve ever known?”

Why is it that no matter how much we have attained, how “happy” we are, how well things are going, if every dream we have ever dreamed has come true, we are filled with such longing? Why does nothing ever satisfy, allow us to breathe that deep sigh of relief and repletion?

We just celebrated Christmas, in the bosom of family, complete with great meals, good times together, the celebration of my four-year-old granddaughter’s birthday, lovely gifts-and here I am, empty again, anxious, striving, wondering if I am really loved. There has never been a time in my whole life that I have felt relaxed about that. The anxiety at times is overwhelming.

I have, truth be told, given up asking the question “Why am I never at peace or satisfied?” because I know the answer. This is not what my soul seeks-this life, however sweet it may be. This is not home. This place is not ultimately what I am made for, and it is not what Diane Keaton is made for.

C.S. Lewis described this longing as something that he came to call “Joy”:

“I call it Joy. ‘Animal-Land’ was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were… The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?…Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse… withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased… In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else… The quality common to the three experiences… is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again… I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

We spend our very lives in the pursuit of pleasure and of comfort-whether it be physical or mental/emotional. As much as I have wanted to lead a useful, significant life, I cannot fool myself that much of my motivation has not been the good feelings that I glean from “doing good” or even “feeling useful”. As I struggle mightily with growing older, the fear, frankly, that I will end up like my mother, lying in bed with dementia, unwilling to move in any way that causes the least pain, and therefore, not moving at all, has become paralyzing at times. It has caused me to look sternly and unforgivingly at my life, how selfish my pursuits have been, how frivolous my use of money, how intent I have been on my own pleasure, and sense of safety. And always, just beyond me, lies Joy. If indeed it is true, as C.S. would say, that if I have a desire there is a corresponding satisfaction for that desire.

This world has become so dark. And maybe much of my perception, again, is age-related. What once seemed worthy, important, good or right has lost its glow. I feel like I am perched on the precipice and I don’t know what is at the bottom-if it is good and wonderful and will propel me forward into acceptance and grace towards my stage in life, or if it will swallow me and destroy me, as my feelings often seem about to do. This is not whiny belly-button gazing I am talking about. This is heart-pounding, throat-clutching anxiety at three a.m. and unable to calm myself down. I am trying here, people. And the dark side seems to be winning at times.

This is what I know, in spite of how little it seems to comfort me. I know, as Blaise Pascal proclaimed in his book, Pensees,

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)

That is all I know. I am not sure of anything much except that my longing for home is a longing for God, and it will not be satisfied as long as I remain here. It is not even satisfied in my closest moments with God, when I am weeping, transported out of my anxiety for a time to a kind of ecstasy in His presence-those only leave me longing for more. It will surely never be touched by any pleasure or diversion I seek. These things only lead me away. Even writing these things down lends only the briefest relief-and honestly, the reason I blog is to find a bit of relief.

I do not know what Heaven will be. Honestly, I am not ever completely sure I will be there. I often feel I might not. Only when I can lay hold in any measure of the immeasurable love of God do I feel His love is so great that He might find a place for me. It is never by looking at myself or anything I have done, or, even more laughably, not done. “It takes all I am to believe in the mercy that covers me.” (Jars of Clay, Worlds Apart)

We just watched the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which is one of our Christmas traditions. I am always struck by how true the story rings. It is my journey, it is your journey, it is the Quest: will we do whatever we have to do to destroy the evil that consumes us and those around us? I feel like Frodo, naked and shivering in the dark, much of the time. I feel like Pippin, terrified as he faces the hordes of Sauron. I feel like Eowyn, afraid her life will count for nothing and she will never do a deed of valor. And I know my heart is full of Gollum, consumed by what I cannot have, my eyes fixed on what will never satisfy, but which rather will kill me.

I long to be like Aragorn, keeping nothing for himself, loving so unselfishly, always brave, always faithful.”I do not fear Death” he said, and I fear it every minute of every day. Or even Merry, who wanted to go to battle. But again and again, I am me. In that story, I fear I would be one of the nameless women, screaming and fleeing in terror, happy to let others fight the battle, only wanting to hide and be safe.

Is there hope for me? I choose to think so at least some of the time. But it is a fight. And this is one of those days on which the fight is fierce. Who would believe such drama? And yet these thoughts consume my heart. I am not easy of mind, resting on any kind of laurels, smug, fat and happy in suburbia. In so many ways I feel I am still waiting to wake up and live. Maybe this will be the year.

We moved this year in February and we haven’t managed to get our sound system up and running so my usual cast of Christmas CDs has languished on the shelf. You are probably as deathly sick as I am of the ten or fifteen songs that get cycled through every Christmas everywhere you go-“White Christmas”, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa”, “Santa Baby”, etc. etc. etc. Why we haven’t been able to come up with any new ones in the last 60 years is beyond me. And of course you never ever hear a song that actually addresses the Jesus part of Christmas-remember Him? All the sacredness has been sucked out of this season and we are left feeling so empty and sad, looking for a feeling that can’t be found outside the wonder of the Story. I know I am not saying anything profound here. But it is profoundly true.

So when I was driving the other day I queued up Handel’s Messiah and was surprised when the opening strains of the overture unleashed a flood of tears and I was overcome with the feeling I had been missing. This story, The Story, is so improbable, so paradoxical, so UNLIKELY, that it fascinates and compels and enchants in a way that all the other symbols and traditions we have attached to this time of year can never do. Nor should they have to.

Consider the line: “‘Comfort ye. Comfort ye, my people,’ saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.” That God would speak comfort to us, in our terror-stricken, war-torn ravaged world, where all seems to be on a downhill slide into the abyss-the natural world being daily wrecked by our excesses, our kids struggling to find a reason to have kids of their own, murder, mayhem, injustice, racism, greed, pride, selfishness everywhere, most of all when we look inward. This is so much NOT what I would expect to hear from God. Comfort.

And how does he speak this comfort?

“For unto us a child is born. Unto us, a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

“Rejoice greatly, Oh Daughter of Zion, Shout, oh daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is the righteous Savior and He shall speak PEACE to the heathen.”

Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart,
and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
(Isaiah 35:5-6)

He shall feed His flock like a shepherd;
and He shall gather the lambs with His arm,
and carry them in His bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
(Isaiah 40:11)

Come unto Him, all ye that labour,
come unto Him that are heavy laden,
and He will give you rest.
Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him,
for He is meek and lowly of heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
(St. Matthew 11:28-29)

His yoke is easy, and His burthen is light.
(St. Matthew 11:30)

These are words that bring life. They are hopeful and gentle and merciful. This is a King who is not like a King at all, to his own peril. He is like a shepherd caring for his flock.

The condescending of God to come to earth is the most compelling idea I have ever tried to understand. I understand the words of a coming judgment, of darkness coming over the earth, of justice and a reckoning that we all will face whether we happen to believe in it or not. On some level we all know it is true. And it won’t be you getting judged that I need to worry about. It will be me. I know my inner thoughts, my hates, my lies, my greed, my apathy and hardheartedness. Thinking that those things will be laid bare between me and the God of the universe should make me tremble. Anyone with a conscience would tremble.

The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple,
even the messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in;
behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts.
(Malachi 3:1)

But who may abide the day of His coming,
and who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a refiner’s fire.
(Malachi 3:2)

And He shall purify the sons of Levi,
that they may offer unto the Lord
an offering in righteousness.
(Malachi 3:3)

These are all verses from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. That bears thinking about. Most of the theology we have about Jesus comes from Old Testament prophecies about him, of which there are seven hundred or so that his life fulfilled to a “T”. The New Testament is full of quotes from the Old Testament spoken in reference to Jesus that were fulfilled through events in his earthly life. The two testaments are seamless in presenting a story of a God who never blinks or fails to acknowledge our sins and failures, and never flags in offering mercy, grace and relationship if we acknowledge them as well.

He is not content to leave us wallowing in a blurry miasma of “I’m OK, You’re OK” either. He shall “purify us that we may make an offering in righteousness”. This is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith, the one that separates us as believers and continually confuses all who have never bothered to seriously examine the faith.

God who is a tender shepherd carrying us around his neck like little lambs, who suffered through life on this broken planet and a horrific death to make us right with him, who calls himself a mother hen gathering her chicks under him, also wants to refine us. This is the paradigm that Handel so masterfully and magnificently expresses in his music, and the “two sides of the story” just really stood out to me this year.

If I know the love of God, how long and high and deep and wide, then I can stand to think about him refining me. It stops feeling like someone wants to crush me and starts feeling like someone wants to free me from the ugliness of sin.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who was arrested, imprisoned and executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, wrote:

“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, THAT THE GOD OF THE WORLD DRAWS NEAR TO THE PEOPLE OF OUR LITTLE EARTH AND LAYS CLAIM TO US. (emphasis mine) The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

Only when we have felt the terror of the matter, can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us, with grace and love. God makes us happy as only children can be happy. God wants to always be with us wherever we may be-in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone; God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. Therefore we adults can rejoice deeply within our hearts under the Christmas tree, perhaps much more than the children are able. We know God’s goodness will once again draw near. We think of all of God’s goodness that came our way last year and sense something of this marvelous home. Jesus comes in judgment AND grace: ” Behold I stand at the door…open wide the gates!” (Psalm 24:7)”

I know that the particular brew of listening to Handel’s Messiah and reading these profound words of Bonhoeffer has affected me in a way that it will probably not affect you, especially if the music is not familiar to you, or indeed playing in the background as you read this. I know this post is probably a little boring or simplistic or for a lot of you, something you have thought about many times and heard expressed much more eloquently.

But I am tired. I am tired of the triteness not only of our thoroughly secularized Christmas but also of our bland and repetitive modern worship music, which lacks the paradox, the complexity, and the awe of a Handel’s Messiah. We have drawn away from our image of God all dimensions but one-the bland Santa Claus God who loves us no matter what and wants to give us all the stuff we ask him for.

If you have no sense of the mystery of God, of your utter inability to comprehend Him-and why would anyone be able to comprehend the totally OTHERness of God?- then there is a failure of imagination and of perceiving the truth of the matter. If the Christmas story has become insipid and merely pleasant to you-a side dish to the main feast of food, folks and fun-then I recommend a healthy dose of Handel. This miraculous and beloved oratorio was written in a mere three to four weeks. Audiences still rise to their feet at the opening strains of the Hallelujah Chorus. I have spent an entire week in my car running around doing errands and weeping as its strains filled my car with glory. It has once again restored to me the true wonder of Christmas-that God stuffed his glory into a tiny cell, became so small as to be invisible-to become the enigma that informs every enigma we now encounter, every bit of suffering, every bit of joy. Emanuel. God is WITH us. I will never understand it and I am only grateful when the wonder of it captures my soul, and lifts me up once again.

Funny, I looked through all my photos, thousands of them, to find a picture that I had taken of this time of year, the short day and long night time of year, and I don’t have one. This shouldn’t surprise me, as I inevitably find myself overcome with a kind of quiet grief as the year winds down and the days telescope into a few brief hours. The sun just went down behind my beautiful Rockies at 4:15. We still have two weeks to go until the shortest day of the year.

I know that a large part of what I feel is the strange interworking of hormones in my brain-my body is reacting to the lack of daylight, just as animals react by growing thick winter coats and plants react by going into dormancy. Maybe they feel depressed too. It is so paradoxical that at this time, when Americans seem to desperately ramp up for “the holiday season”, all of nature is withdrawn, quiescent, dark and cold.

I am so weary of it all, really, the whole “Christmas” thing. My family gets tired of hearing me whine about it, I’m sure. When I became “The Mom” I assumed an unbearable load of making Christmas as magical and excessive as all the movies would have you believe it should be. Not such a task when your kids are small and their toys are inexpensive! But my own act has become the one I cannot follow, and I have come to approach this season with dread. My children are so kind, looking me deeply in the eye and telling me I am off the hook. They really mean it. But what I remember is the disappointment I often felt at Christmas, how it never measured up to my dreams and desires, and this is what drives me to try so hard, and as the years have gone on, to feel so painfully stressed.

Can’t we stop? I mean, really, who can afford this dream? And the dream lies, because no child of any age can be satisfied by stuff. It just can’t do it. And yet at this time of year, the lie is that it can. So the afternoon of December 25th, no matter how wretched your excess, is a time of secret disappointment, because all the windup is over, the tree looks like a carcass, and tomorrow will be just another day. Another day of woeful news stories, killings and war, terror in every heart, the utter pathos of this broken ravaged world. Oh, and credit card bills that are so much bigger than you planned.

It doesn’t seem like a mistake to me that the tradition developed that Jesus was born at the very darkest time of the year. I don’t know when he was really born and I don’t suppose anyone really does, but here we are, and the child in the rough and dirty stable didn’t do it for us, so we made this, this THING out of it, and now, of course, we have grown out of calling it Christmas and it has officially nothing more to do with the Christ. All the real meaning has been squeezed out of it in favor of Zales diamonds and toys and Santa Claus.

But still, in the stillness, in the poverty and brokenness of a raging war-torn world, the Christ comes. In the darkness, like a secret, He comes. He isn’t flashy or famous or rich, he doesn’t grab the microphone, he doesn’t demand his fifteen minutes. Many many people don’t even notice him at all. And of course, in our country, all the crazies get the press so He is now associated with people that are so self-righteous, so judgmental, so unpleasant, that…oh, wait a minute, the religious people of his day were exactly the same. He didn’t like them much either.

I want to sink into this dark time of the year and embrace its truth: nothing that this world has to offer can satisfy this raging need in my soul. I try again and again, and it never works. You know, I hate those lights that look like they are frantically running along a maze like rats looking for a reward. I hate the laser lights that change every five seconds like TV commercials. God help us, we have infused this time, when we could be still and peaceful and receptive, and pregnant, for crying out loud, with noise and movement and meaningless “celebration” that celebrates nothing. It just gives us something we have to recover from in January, when winter REALLY comes.

So I will feel this grief. I will mourn over the world, so filled with darkness and hatred and alienation. I will stop trying to fill the void in my children that nothing material can fill. I will watch the sun set earlier and earlier and I will light a still quiet candle and think about hope. I read a blog today by my friend Tim, who is a doctor in Angola, and is faced daily with a population who has no hope for enough food and water, much less medicine, education, and anything like material prosperity. They have no trouble focusing on the hope of Christ, of a world to come. There is no hope for them here and they know it. Would that I would know it too. In the dark days of December, when the world seems to be shutting down for business, (in spite of all our denial), I can hope. And it will fill me.

Thanksgiving in NOLA

I just got back from visiting my daughter in New Orleans for
Thanksgiving. In the wake of the Paris attacks, my usual fear of flying escalated to sheer lunacy, so I drove. It is a three thousand mile round trip, the farthest I have ever driven by myself, and as always, I was impressed with how much space there still is in our country with no people in it.

When I left Denver on Sunday morning, it was perfectly clear, and the light was the peculiar gold of late November. The sun was just coming up and shone straight into my face across the expanse of the plains. People actually pulled over, it was so blinding. Kansas was gorgeous, the fields still brilliant green, the trees faded rust and bronze, the windmills marching like great armies of science fiction beasts across the vast prairie. People everywhere love to hate the drive across Kansas because it is so endless and so empty, but this time it was stunning. I turned south halfway across and went down through Oklahoma and through Dallas, east into Louisiana on a road that was nothing more than a tunnel through the trees.

Much of the highway in Louisiana was built on pylons over water. It was an odd feeling, driving on the water through the great swamps. Everything was still and green and lush, strange, coming from the snowy Rockies and an early winter. It was pretty from the inside of my car, but I found myself awash in anxiety at being in the South-such a foreign land for me, filled with nuances I didn’t understand and couldn’t really identify. It probably is mostly in my head and the result of too many movies and not enough real life, but it was real for me nonetheless.

When I drove out of the woods and onto the water on my final approach to New Orleans, I was enchanted by the moon coming up on the water, the late afternoon light that turned the water from what had been a dank brown into the lightest of blues, and New Orleans hanging seeming suspended on the water, like a floating island off in the distance. It seemed like a city full of light, like Oz, magical.

This feeling lasted until I descended down from the highway into my daughter’s neighborhood, close to the French Quarter on Esplanade, a gracious boulevard awash in lush vegetation, huge old live oaks, and a pervasive sense of decay. There were homeless folks with signs congregating under the highway, the houses looked much the worse for wear, and it all gave me the sense of an old woman sporting too much makeup, and that poorly applied, in an attempt to cover the ravages of age. It didn’t work very well. Coming from clean, mostly new and prosperous Denver, it seemed dirty and dangerous to me. My anxiety increased.

And there she was, coming out her front door, my beautiful Liz, with Arrow, her black German Shepherd, trying to climb over the fence to say hello. It is very difficult to capture the sense of disquiet I felt that this is where she lives now. Her house is old and in disrepair although it once was magnificent-floor to ceiling windows, porches up and down, now chopped into six apartments with a landlord that you just don’t want to call. There is no heat in her house, which is okay for most of the year, but had come as a shock to her a few days earlier when the weather truly began to change. She and her roommate hadn’t noticed that detail when they moved in in May. The light in the entryway doesn’t work and the front door was a spider web of fractured glass. None of the locks seemed secure to me. Her front door seemed like it could be forced with a shoulder, and nothing seemed to stand between my precious baby and this wild city but her dog. Who, thankfully, seems to scare the crap out of most people.

My mommy alarms were all screeching wildly. My stomach was in a knot. I wanted to pack her up immediately and run for the hills. But you don’t get to do that when your child is 26 and trying to make her way. So we spent the evening buying a space heater for her room and one for the bathroom, new flannel sheets and more blankets, and me trying to remain calm and assimilate this new understanding of her life.

She moved to New Orleans in February to work at an inner city medical clinic for doctor friends of my brother and sister-in-law. A job doing patient care had been promised but the reality was that she was stuck in an operator position answering phones for most of every day, doing referrals, interacting with her computer. She had learned a great deal about how the system works and how to get things done within it, and how to interface with the great snarl of electronic medical records, all of which will give her a leg up in medical school, but she is the most social of animals, and the isolation of working a phone and a computer all day had wilted her. Now she was starting a job “in the industry” as they call it there, working at a restaurant, and, perplexingly, her doctor boss had offered her a one-day-a-week position doing patient care when she gave her notice. Go figure. So she is starting to perk up again, but it has been a lonely and hard ten months.

The next day, she left for work early and I was left to myself for the day. The house was cold and dank outside of her bedroom, which was now reasonably cozy with the heater running. But it was sunny, so finally I ventured outside with Arrow, and walked down Esplanade towards City Park.

I discovered at this point that what she had told me was true: folks were highly respectful and often frightened of her dog, who is the wiggliest and sweetest of souls, but can look imposing when he is alert and leashed. I started to feel better. Everyone I passed greeted me. Her neighborhood was a mishmash of every kind of person, old and young, black and white, off to work on a bicycle or drinking at ten in the morning. As I moved up Esplanade towards the park, the houses got nicer and more kept-up. I am a little embarrassed to say how much better that made me feel.

Liz says that being in New Orleans reminds her of being in Central America. Everything is older, dirtier, moldier, overrun with vegetation, poorer, more cobbled together. Katrina, of course, took a terrible toll, and although this is one of the less affected parts of the city, there are buildings that remain boarded up and abandoned ten years later. I saw a few with the spray-painted signs on them, a circle with an “X” inside, separating it into four quadrants, with a date in the top quadrant (when the house was searched), the left quadrant with initials denoting the Rescue Team identifier-state police, National Guard, etc., the right quadrant detailing hazards present: rats, NE for no entry, F/W for food and water, EX for exterior surveyed, and the ominous bottom quadrant which recorded the presence or absence of bodies alive or dead. Units from Oregon, California, West Virginia, Texas and elsewhere had all left their marks.

That afternoon, I visited her favorite coffee shop, the Treme Coffee Shop. This was a really beautiful time of year to visit, with the air being cool and temperate, the day sunny, windows and doors open, no bugs-the coffee shop was light and airy, homey and clean. The latte was excellent and I sat on a leather couch with the warm sun on my shoulders for a couple of hours and started to settle down. I loved the variety of people that came in and out. There is a quality to the people in New Orleans that is striking-you feel like a lot of the people are always wearing a costume, like for fun, not to hide. People are putting themselves out there in all their individuality, no apologies, with a bit of glee. Like this is a place where people come to finally, with a deep sigh of relief, be themselves.

I stopped feeling so afraid. It disturbed me how shaken I felt, how nervous. I have lived in the country for a long time now, in a place that is pretty homogeneous, at least compared to New Orleans. And New Orleans, is, statistically, a very dangerous city. I still wanted to flank my daughter with a phalanx of large bodyguards. Or take her home. Neither option was on offer. So I drank my latte and breathed deeply.

The next couple of days we spent shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner, walking around the French Quarter, eating out, going to the movies, and talking about deep things. There is no surfacey garbage with Liz. She will talk about hard stuff even with me, her mother. We are friends, although our relationship is always informed by our primal connection. Sometimes that is frustrating for me, because questions that one of her contemporaries could easily ask become fraught with difficulty when I ask them, but we talk about that too. I don’t really want to stop being her mother-I just don’t like it when it feels like a liability.

I awoke in the middle of the night on Wednesday and was flooded with memories of my young adulthood-dicey situations I had put myself in, really bad choices in relationships, the loneliness, the feeling of never fitting in or having a place in the world-the deep alienation that was a result of dysfunction in my family. It was like watching a chronological movie of my life, and an experience I had never had in quite that way before. I realized that what was so hard about Liz in New Orleans was all the stuff from my own life that I was projecting onto her life. My own depression and estrangement, living alone, feeling like I had failed in so many ways-I realize now, as I write this, that I so desperately want to protect Liz, and indeed all my children, from the struggle, and defeats, and heartache and sadness and failures that riddled my own path to maturity. I want to keep them safe not only from the world that is so full of every kind of danger, but from themselves and their own immaturity.

As I laid there in the dark with all those sad and difficult memories parading across my consciousness, a verse came to me-“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1) I have read and heard that verse so many times in the last forty years that it usually just sounds singsong to me, blah blah blah, as ashamed as that makes me to admit. It hasn’t touched me deep down in my reality maybe ever. But now it did. Not in a euphoric Pollyanna way, but in a way where I thought, “Either it’s true or it isn’t, and if it is really really true, I should feel differently inside. I should feel free. I should feel the load no more.” And you know what, I still have to just pretend that it is true, because it still feels like a fairy tale to me. And that is a lot of the reason why I can’t leave my children in the hands of God and trust Him for their growth and safety and story.

I’m not going to lie-the whole trip was overlaid with a sense of longing to just bring Liz home. I miss her so deeply that I miss her even when I am with her. We made our dinner together and ate it sitting on her front veranda-it can’t just be a porch in New Orleans-and it was so bittersweet I could have cried. I thought of our “normal” family thanksgivings- all of us together cooking and hanging out, laughing, safe and secure and wrapped in the comfort of each other-and here we were, Steve working alone in Alamosa, Sam and Alan eating with friends, Emily and Brad home with each other-and it just felt wrong on some level. And yet. And yet. I was so glad to be with Liz. People strolled by while we ate, wishing us Happy Thanksgiving, the sun slanted in through the trees in the late afternoon, the Spanish moss on the trees swayed a bit in a freshening breeze. I think there was a parade somewhere because people dressed in all manner of costumes walked and rode by on bikes, headed to the French Quarter. Or maybe they just always dress like that.

Her neighbor, aptly called Rooster-although I think his mother called him Andrew-came over and tried to fix the hall light-it doesn’t work of course, and why would it? and I was struck by his kindness, however laced in alcohol and affectations-and felt more secure about her living there because he will be one of the people that keeps an eye on her. We ate pie and watched a movie and washed dishes. I packed to leave the next morning.

I always wanted to have brave kids because I was so fearful. I always knew Liz would be the one who struck out into the world on adventures, and that thrilled me, and filled me with admiration. The hard part is trusting-in God, to watch over her and to be a wide open space for her, in Liz, to not be foolish, although she certainly will be, just as I was-and maybe even in the world just a little-the people who surround her there, to see her not as a target but as a precious daughter, a jewel, a warrior princess.

The next morning I left early, before she left for work, and headed back to Colorado. It was warm and steamy that morning, but by evening when I made it to Oklahoma City, it was just at the freezing point and raining hard. The Heartland spent the next couple of days in the grip of an ice storm and I laid around in a hotel room for two nights and a day, waiting it out and thinking about Liz.

I feel better and worse about her situation. It was not as “nice” a house as I thought it would be and I still find that unsettling. But there are people there who know her and care about her, a community. She is a community builder and one is springing up around her. Is she “safe?” Not like I wish her to be, ever, but this is life, not a movie. There is no guarantee of a happy ending, only clinging to God and each other in what is often a dark and lonely place. New Orleans is a place lacking restraints-there is a lot of letting the good times roll, and that isn’t always a beautiful thing. Just last week a Tulane medical student got shot in the stomach rescuing a girl who was getting dragged into a dark alley by her hair-fortunately the perpetrator was caught, the girl was unharmed and the hero will be okay, but those stories don’t always end like that. I can only pray that something like that will not happen to the girl that I love who lives there. She is 1500 miles away and it is a long way. It is another world. I want her to come home. I can’t help that. But there are no leash laws for your kids, are there? Just hope, and prayer, and the bonds of love.

I had a dream last night. In my dream I was wandering around my childhood home, looking in the various rooms and wondering where everyone was. It was one of those long, murky confusing dreams where the house didn’t look exactly like it actually did then, or does now. Maybe I was dreaming more about how I felt about the house than what it actually looked like. I was sitting in a room and suddenly my father walked in.

My father died in 1992. He was only 68. My relationship with him was very very difficult. There was great damage done on many fronts which I have spent most of my life working at healing from. I wasn’t particularly sad when he died. It makes me a bit ashamed to say that because it seems so unnatural. But honestly, I had to distance myself from him to survive. Doing that left me with very little natural feeling for him, beyond the polite interest I would feel in any stranger. God became the Father in my life in a very profound sense. I stopped trying to drink from an empty well and found one that gushed water over every inch of my heart.

But that is not my point. My point is that when I saw him I was really and truly happy to see him. On one level I knew that he is dead but he looked very alive and normal, not like he looked after he became ill with heart disease, but how he looked about ten years before that. I said, “Dad?” with a kind of incredulity. I asked, “What are you doing here?” It will amuse members of my family reading this to know that he answered that he had come back to interfere in the next election. It was not a gushy lovey-dovey reunion, just very matter-of-fact and weird all at the same time.

When I woke, I realized that I wasn’t mad when I saw him, or hurt, or full of grievances and ready to rumble. I just felt glad to see him. I felt the love that I felt for him sometimes. I felt our connection. And for the first time I felt hope about seeing him again, beyond this earthly pale. I understood that I had forgiven him.

I can only liken the feeling to that moment in “The Lord of the Rings” when Galadriel takes the Ring offered by Frodo and speaks her vision of what powers the ring would afford her, were she to appropriate it. A terrifying and horrifying vision, for what would happen to Middle Earth were one of its most trustworthy and good leaders to succumb to the terrible temptation of Absolute Power? Frodo can only hide his head and tremble.

But then it is over and she drops the Ring. Her face is filled with beatific light and she says, “I have passed the test.” She has feared how she would cope with such an offer for a very long time, one imagines. Would the goodness that she had cultivated be enough against such naked lust and greed? It was. And how relieved we all are that it is. How hopeful we are that we would stand as well.

I feel like I had a precious glimpse into the future when I dreamt of my father. That forgiveness, while never easy, is REAL. If you keep releasing, keep blessing, keep giving your hurt to God, something actually HAPPENS that cannot be taken from you. How lovely it will be to see my father again one day and not have any anger towards him.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. It is not saying that what happened to you, or what was done to you, is okay. It is releasing the hurt to God for HIM to judge and deal with as He wishes. When you think of God as being the most just of judges, and right and pure in all that He does, this affords a surprising measure of comfort and relief. It is also true that when you think about the many things YOU have done wrong, ways that you have hurt others, you can hope that God will deal with you with mercy and kindness, not condemnation. And in hoping that you can begin to hope that for the one who has wronged you. It is most often not a quick process and it takes persistence on our part. But really that is all it takes. If you keep doing it, you find your feelings changing in ways you could never imagine. As the burden of unforgiveness lifts off of you, you realize how very heavy a load it was, how exhausting, how sapping. You realize it truly was never yours to bear.

It has taken me years and years to get to this point, and it has involved significant agony of the soul. I will never say forgiving is easy or no big deal. It is the very biggest of deals. But it truly is worth it to be somewhere in the process of forgiving, rather than stuck in a deep rut in the middle of the road with no way to go forward, and no way to go back

This is a really weird and funky picture of my forehead. We have a joke in our family about our large foreheads, which, of course, we always claim are the storefronts of megabrains. If you look closely-well, you don’t even have to look closely, you can see them from several yards away- you will note the presence of multiple lines in my forehead that in this configuration look almost obscene. Trust me, they actually are, because they are the outward manifestations of my inward penchant for worry, anxiety and fear. This picture is a really good representation of how I have felt for just about exactly a year now, and tells you why I have not even been able to settle enough to write a post for a good long while. And by the way, I am definitely better-looking than this picture would suggest.

But worry, anxiety and fear have made me pretty ugly in a lot of ways these past months. I have been depressed. I have withdrawn from my friends, hidden in my house that I almost started to hate because we hadn’t sold it yet, even told myself lies about how I despised where we were living because I wanted to move and be closer to my children and granddaughter. I have believed that this thing that I wanted would never happen and it has made me feel trapped and desperate at times. I have questioned the goodness and love of God towards me on multiple occasions. I have slogged through day after day of these feelings and I have gained weight, stopped exercising, and in general become a slob. Ugh.

Life is always difficult in one way or another. One man’s crisis is another man’s pipe dream. I know so well that my problems will always be First World Problems. And rarified FWPs at that. But my problems are my problems and from inside me they will always loom large and seem insurmountable at times. We have lived through a lot in this past year. I feel older after this year, and more fragile. But really, the fact is that I have merely become more aware of the reality of my situation: I am aging, my sweetheart is aging, life is tenuous and sturdy all at the same time, I am in control of almost nothing, even, it would seem of late, the movement of my hand to my mouth with food in it. We are all going to die. It’s all wonderfully, terrifyingly true.

The upside of this past year is that I feel a lot more loving. In spite of being withdrawn and being a really lousy friend this year (huge apology to all my friends that I have been neglecting-you know who you are) I feel gentler towards the rest of the human race-except those who get in the passing lane and drive five miles below the speed limit- you, I hate. But I do think that there is something about being leveled by life that makes you a lot more tender towards the rest of your fellow humans. We are, after all, every one of us, so inadequate and bitch-slapped by life. And the best we can do is to love each other. Just celebrate the existence of each other. Just find the beauty in each face.

I have been reading a lot about Joni Mitchell lately. She has just released a four-CD compilation of her life’s work and has been getting a lot of press. She was my idol growing up and well into my twenties. Her songs were the soundtrack of my life. She is a masterful musician and artist. She was blond, thin and gorgeous. What’s not to like? But as I read about her and hear her voice in multiple interviews, I have lost my taste for her. She is primarily concerned, and seems to have been for most of her life, in correcting pretty much everyone in the world about who she is and what her “legacy” will be. My overall impression of her is that she has spent her life feeling like she was extraordinary and that her job was to make sure everyone knew that. I see a person who has not been very successful in her relationships and I wonder, in the night, when she is alone with her giant-sized ego, if she feels as awesome as she wants the rest of us to believe she is. It must be very lonely to be her. While I will always admire her writing and her musicianship, I no longer wish I was more like Joni Mitchell. I am sure you are all relieved to hear this. But it really sobers me to look at her life and what she has evolved into after seventy-one years of living for her “art”, which when it comes down to it, means living almost solely on her own terms and for her own gratification. Because of her brilliance, which is undeniable, she feels herself to be a more significant sort of human than the rest, or most of the rest, of us. And she doesn’t even have that big of a forehead! Go figure!

Somehow this is not as much of a digression as it seems. It IS a part of this story. I am so struck by what a long life lived in the pursuit of one’s own very personal goals at the expense of relationship, and love, can look like. And I just really don’t want mine to look like that. I mean, do we even GET to decide what our legacy is? To me, that would seem to be the job of those left behind when we are gone.

But anyway. I guess I did digress. The good news is, our house sold last week and we have a new place to go to that is going to be just great. A very different life is opening up-a townhouse instead of a 160 acre ranch, the suburbs (HA! I swore I would never go back! Wrong again.) instead of the country, close to family instead of far away-the not-quite-down-the-street-but-close-enough-for-jazz grandparents instead of the four hours away grandparents-it is all sounding good. I will write much more about this move and all it entails later. It feels like my life ground to a halt for a year and is now starting up again. But I know that isn’t true. I have been living all this time, and learning things that can only be learned when life is hard and things are not going your way. But that is a story for another day. It is time to go for a walk!

I have been taking a class on mindfulness meditation for the last few weeks. It meets on Tuesday evenings and we all sit on yoga mats in a small room at the offices of several counselors. Our teacher is a lovely woman who makes meditation CDs for us with her wonderful soothing voice. I am learning something about slowing down my mind, breathing, relaxing, and being in the present moment. I am learning that this is something I am actually capable of doing, which until now I sincerely did not believe was possible.

It is really nice to lie on the floor, close my eyes, and listen to her voice taking me through a guided meditation. I don’t have to go to a beach, or breathe a certain way, or count, or even particularly use my imagination. The point is to notice what is. To just be in the moment. Honestly, you would think that is not a big deal, or hard to do, but for me it is quite a challenge.

It turns out that there are not very many things I do where I am actually present to my life. I am almost always thinking about the past or the future, in a hurry, rehearsing, reviewing, multitasking, or downright trying to avoid the present in any way possible. The short list I have compiled so far of activities when I am present are 1) getting a massage-who wouldn’t want to be present for that?! and 2) riding my horse. When I am on my horse I can just be there, present to him, present to myself, present to the beauty around me.

When I am driving I am almost never just there, in the car, experiencing that. Or walking. Have you ever slowed down enough to notice walking? We did it one night and it was amazing. I always walk to get somewhere and I am always thinking about something else when I am doing it. Eating is a big one. I almost never just eat. It makes me anxious to just sit and eat, to chew slowly, to savor the experience. I have always been kind of proud of my efficiency, my ability to multitask, to whip things together, to work quickly, to get a lot done in a day. Hmmmm.

The fact is, if I am honest with myself, my life does not feel important enough to me that it would be worth being present to. Why would it matter if I ate mindfully, or cooked mindfully or drove mindfully, or walked mindfully? Who cares?

But maybe the better question is, what would my life be like if I DID live mindfully? How would it be different? I know that just the act of writing in my blog has led me to living more mindfully and that has been a good thing for me, and maybe even for some of my readers. When I just zone out and watch TV or let Facebook suck the hours out of my day, there is nothing to say, just discontent, anxiety, boredom and the sense that somewhere else life is happening and I am missing it.

So I am trying this new way of thinking and living. I could spend a long time talking about the ways in which the last few months have been profoundly difficult and unsettling for me. I could. I could go on and on. But instead I would like to enjoy this present moment, in front of a warm fire, with the dogs asleep on the floor beside me, experiencing the pleasure of tapping out word on this keyboard, drinking a hot cup of coffee, and just breathing.

I think this tool, this practice, this way of being, can be a huge help during this time of year we refer to as “the holidays”. If you are anything like me, these couple of months are incredibly stressful and not a lot of fun. I envy those who revel in all the celebration but to me, it often just feels like an unbearable load of expectations that I am sure I cannot fulfill. It all comes from inside me. My family wishes profoundly that I could just relax. I am going to try this year. Somehow I need to get back to what this time of Advent, this time of waiting, is all about. If you have thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear them. Meanwhile I am going to be sitting here, breathing.